It's not enough to find an honest charity

_There are over
1,000,000 registered charities in the US alone, and they aren’t
all equally good. When people think about good and bad charities, they usually think that the question is whether charities are honest or dishonest. People usually think that honest charities do good, while dishonest charities do not. But that’s not right. Honest charities try to do good. But there is a difference between trying and succeeding. If you want to do good by donating, you need to do more than find an honest charity. You need to find an honest charity that has programs that actually work. This is not as easy as it seems.

It's not obvious which charities have positive impacts

When thinking about charities, people fall into two different traps. First, most people unthinkingly assume that all honest charities have positive effects. That’s wrong. Second, most people think that they have a special sense – their own intuitions – that shows them which charities are likely to have positive impacts. For most people, that’s wrong too.

The Charity Assessment Giving Game

﻿This quick Giving Game lets you test your intuition about what kind of impact a charity will have. You'll read a brief description of eight nonprofit charities, and guess whether the program had positive effects, negative effects, or no effects. After reviewing your answers, you'll get to vote between two charities with proven positive impacts. Each person voting will decide where $5 will be allocated. We will support donations up to a maximum of $1000. You can participate until July 31st, 2016. ​This Giving Game was adapted with permission from THINK (The High Impact NetworK).

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A Path That's Clear makes it possible for anyone to use charitable giving to explore their values. We aim to help current and future donors turn their good intentions into good outcomes, by encouraging thoughtful and strategic giving.